Future of Joomla providers....

Future of Joomla providers....

Posted 1 year 11 months ago

I noticed that Gavick has been purchased by JoomlArt, who also own iJoomla and JomSocial... I am glad to see that JoomlArt is doing well, I don't know offhand if I've ever used any of their templates or components over the past 10+ years but my concern is what is Rocket Theme's current situation? Are they stable? This could ultimately become a "monopoly" for JoomlArt and I worry about the future of Joomla third-party template and component providers in general. Here's hoping for the best!

Re: Future of Joomla providers....

Posted 1 year 11 months ago

I know this will come across as a non-answer, and I apologize in advance for that.

Over the past six months, I've been stressing in the forums on multiple threads why we are betting on Grav, and that while Joomla is still in the heart and soul of our company, we aren't going to be able to rely on it to be our bread and butter forever.

Don't get me wrong, we are still building new templates on Joomla FIRST. Our Joomla club is still our biggest and most active of the three current clubs. We love Joomla and aren't going to move away from it... we're just expanding out reach so we don't solely rely on it.

Our Joomla business has been impacted in recent years in lockstep with Joomla's install base. Less Joomla users means less RocketTheme Joomla Club members. Less NEW Joomla users means less business for every template house in the business. This creates a downward spiral. There are less modern template makers, less appealing templates that make people want to use Joomla, and ultimately less Joomla users. A vicious cycle.

The cold reality is this. We're adapting to the situation. We're expanding our reach to Grav and optimizing our approach in order to stay ahead of the curve.

All of this is in an effort to ensure that we can keep making new templates and providing support that is second to none.

We're not planning to go anywhere any time soon, but situations like the one with Gavick only stresses the point we've been making over the past few months. We have to pivot with the industry, and for us that meant building Grav and focusing on quality rather than quantity in our templates.

To my knowledge, we aren't disappearing any time soon. It's a shame what happened to houses like Gavick. These were/are great companies with incredible teams. It all comes down to Joomla being able to right its ship.